The invention relates to an airbag system for jointly supporting at least two vehicle occupants inside a motor vehicle in case of an accident. The airbag system has at least two separate airbags inflatable by gas supplied by a gas generator.
German Patent Specification DE 43 02 891 C2 discloses an airbag system which is designed to support at least two vehicle occupants, especially in the knee region. To this end, the prior-art airbag system has two separate airbags arranged in the center console of a motor vehicle. When triggered, these airbags are inflated by a common inflation device and emerge laterally from the center console so that they extend in front of the knees of the vehicle occupants sitting to the right and the left of the center console supporting them in the knee region.
The airbag system disclosed in DE 43 02 891 C2 cannot be used to support the upper body of several, or at least two, vehicle occupants by means of airbags inflatable from the dashboard. To solve this problem it is known from Patent Specification DE 199 33 586 C1 or German Laid Open Publication DE 196 20 537 A1 to divide a single airbag into several chambers. The airbag extends in front of the two or more vehicle occupants and consists of a uniform textile blank, using suitable configurations.
An airbag system designed in this manner has several drawbacks. Such a system can be optimally configured only for two persons of identical size penetrating the central airbag uniformly. If only one person is to be protected, one problem is that the internal pressure of the large airbag required to produce a corresponding retaining action cannot be reached because the volume of the airbag is too large. In the case of two persons of very different size and different body weight, the vehicle occupants also cannot be optimally protected because the differences in body size and body weight cannot be taken into account. Also, if the vehicle occupants are sitting in different positions relative to the airbag prior to the accident, very different retaining actions result, even for identical occupants. Furthermore, such a single airbag has a very large volume. Since the time required for inflation must be comparable to that of other airbag systems, such a large airbag must be filled with a substantially greater volume flow per time unit. Very high loads can occur especially for vehicle occupants sitting near the area in front of the deploying airbag, i.e. in a so-called out/off position.
Thus, an object of the invention is to provide an airbag system which offers both or several vehicle occupants equal protection for the loading cases that have to be assumed.
This object, including advantageous embodiments and refinements of the invention, is attained as set forth in the claims following this description.